Bruce Piephoff was born and raised and continues to live in Greensboro, North Carolina. He is a singer/songwriter with 17 CDs of original folk/blues and spoken poetry on Flyin’ Cloud Records(www.flyincloudrecords.com).
As a kid he was influenced by his father’s guitar playing and interest in folksingers like Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Eric Andersen, John Prine, Townes Van Zandt, Tom Waits and Tom Paxton.
He dropped out of college at UNC-Chapel Hill after 2 years to ply his trade as a traveling singer/songwriter and hitchhiked across the country several times playing at little bars and cafes. Later he returned to school during a slow period and finished a B.A. in English at UNC-Greensboro and even got his Master of Fine Arts degree there in poetry where he studied with Fred Chappell and Robert Watson.
This led to work in a wonderful program they had at that time called the Visiting Artist program. It was sponsored by the N.C. Arts Council and the Community College System and allowed artists to live in small rural communities doing concerts, workshops and performances free to the local community. The artist was paid a salary by the state and had full health insurance and benefits. Bruce did this kind of work as his bread and butter for a number of years, 1986-2001, and found such residencies all over N.C. and in Florida and Virginia before funding was ended in 2001 by the government.
Since then Bruce has gone back to touring the folk circuit coffeehouses, festivals, house concerts, schools, etc., often with Pat Lawrence backing him on upright bass, Martha Bassett on backup vocals and Scott Manring on lead guitar.
He has played everywhere from the Kennedy Center in D.C. to the Collard Festival in Ayden, NC and shared the stage with Tom Paxton, Chuck Brodsky, Steve Forbert, Riders In The Sky, Greg Allman, Hot Tuna, Stacey Earle and many others. He performed at the main stage of Merlefest in 1993 and was a New Folk Finalist at Kerrville in 1994.
His 2004 CD, Good People, reached the top 70 for May and June of 2004 at the folkradio.org website for a song called “20 Miles To Baghdad”. The album and song also made Richard Gillman’s Top Songs and Albums list for 2004 at FolkRadio.org. It received airplay on folk shows across the country and in England and Ireland and Bruce toured Arizona, New Mexico, Tennessee, Virginia, The Carolinas, Florida, West Virginia and a number of other states behind the CD. Chuck Brodsky has called Bruce “one of the best kept secrets in Americana music and one of the best songwriters in his region.” Bruce’s 16th CD, The Chestnut Tree, was released in 2008 and his 15th, Sogni D’Oro,was released in 2007. The Chestnut Tree was one of Yes Weekly!s top 10 records for 2008 and made the top 100 at WNCW radio in western N.C. Sogni D’Oro and The Chestnut Tree made #1 at WQFS radio at Guilford College. Bruce is releasing his 17th CD for Flyin’ Cloud Records, CLOCKWORK, in 2009 and will publish his second collection of poetry, Fiddlers and Middlers with Yonno Press also in 2009. He continues to tour out of Greensboro, NC performing solo or with his band.
